Customer Reviews

A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain

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In this book Dr Robert Darby has examined Victorian thinking on male sexuality. In doing so he has exposed the roots of the thinking which still permeates medical and social attitudes to
circumcision in English-speaking countries. It is easy enough to be aware of the general nature of this negative energy around male sexuality, but until A Surgical Temptation exposed me to its murkiest depths I did not really understand where it all came from, or how mad it really is!

At the centre of the book is Victorian medical men's hatred of the foreskin - and their frank if backhanded acknowledgement of how significantly the foreskin contributes to sexual pleasure: they realised that it is easier and more pleasurable for a boy to play with his penis if it still has all its moving parts. This is the fundamental reason for the surgical temptation and the demonisation of the foreskin in the title.

There is an indignant voice behind the detailed historical research that quietly asks us to question modern practice and attitudes. Routine circumcision rates remain high in the United States and many developing countries. Much lower rates are found in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. My suspicion is that the reasons for this are to be found in the same misinformed Victorian prudery that the book so expertly and thoroughly exposes.

I notice that Dr Darby has outlined some of the arguments in his book in an article published by American Sexuality Magazine. The book has been referred to as, "required reading" in a review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The first pages of the first chapter quickly dispel any notion that genital cutting of infants and children has ever had a medical purpose.